Noun: grift
| Singular | grift |
| Plural | grifts |
Sample Sentences
-
Hey, what's the grift? What are you trying to pull?
-
‘Sounds like he’s trying to stretch out his grift for as long as possible,’ Gentle said. ‘Taking as much from his followers as he can before it falls apart.’ [2022, Paul McAuley, Beyond the Burn Line, Gollancz, page 172:]
Nouns inflected like grift
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
American criminal underworld slang, 1906 (noun), 1915 (verb), alteration of graft (“corruption, illicit profit through corrupt means, bribe, one's occupation”), alteration perhaps influenced by similar sounding words, e.g. drift, etc., probably ultimately from Middle Dutch graft (“digging, ditch, canal, trench”) (modern Dutch gracht), related to Dutch graven (“to dig”), English grave (“to dig”). See: Dutch Nouns '
gracht', English Nouns '
grave'.